Danse sacrée et danse profane

Debussy didn’t much like writing music to commission, least of all if it involved making a special feature of a solo instrument. In 1904 however, perhaps as a diversion from long-term work on La Mer, he did agree to write two short pieces for the chromatic harp – “an instrument,” he confessed to a friend, “totally unknown to me.”

In fact, the chromatic harp had only recently been invented by Gustave Lyon, director of the musical instrument manufacturer Pleyel, in the hope of displacing the standard pedal harp made by the rival firm of Erard. Although Lyon had succeeded in getting a chromatic-harp class set up at the Paris Conservatoire, his commercial strategy failed at an early stage – partly because the new instrument (with its double row of strings) took so long to tune and partly because Erard had so effectively retaliated by commissioning Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for the double-action pedal harp. Fortunately, Debussy’s two dances did not become obsolete with the instrument they were written for: they can be played equally well on the pedal harp, as they were for the first time in public 1910 and as they have been ever since.

The “sacred” and “profane” distinction drawn between the two dances in the title of the work should not be taken too seriously. It means little more than that, while both of them are modest in expression and subtly integrated in their scoring for harp and strings, each has its own modal and rhythmic character, the second being rather more worldly than the first. There is actually nothing sacred about the origin of the graceful main theme of the Danse sacrée which derives from a Danse du voile (Dance of the veil) recently published in the Revue musicale by the Portuguese composer Francisco de Lacerda (who, since he conducted a performance of the work in 1905, was presumably in agreement with the loan). Constructed in ternary form, with matching outer sections and a contrasting middle section featuring characteristic whole-tone harmonies, it includes a little cadenza just before the harp effects a transition into the second piece. The Danse profane is an intriguingly disguised waltz presented as a miniature rondo with a comparatively outspoken climax towards the end. The second episode before the last appearance of the main theme neatly refers back to the middle section of the Danse sacrée.

Gerald Larner©2004